Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  Chalice nodded his head, knowing that he really wasn’t sure what he understood, but that he understood it, and that it was important to Forsythe that he did. Forsythe continued to stare at him, and Chalice knew he should say something. All he could think of were comments like “You never can tell” or “That’s a bust,” so he just shook his head.

  A light spray of rain began to fall. Forsythe flipped away the twig in his hand and took cover under a nearby tree. The rain became heavier. He was facing the mountains, watching the slow quiet drizzle envelop them. He hunched his shoulders so the droplets flowing down the back of his helmet couldn’t drip inside of his shirt. A penetrating chill seeped through his limbs. He folded his arms tightly in front of his chest. A somber stare on his face, he scanned the rice paddies, not seeing anything but the thoughts in his mind, oblivious to the rain.

  Scott had graduated first in the class and was supposed to have given the valedictory. The English teacher who had been helping Scott suggested that Forsythe, who had graduated third, give Scott’s speech. Forsythe refused, but the teacher persisted until he finally agreed. As he looked over Scott’s speech his stomach tightened with anger and disgust. Eyes darting back and locking on phrases such as “make the world a better place,” he pictured Scott saying and being sickened by them; the phoniness, the sad phoniness of the whole idea gripped his throat as if it were going to choke him.

  During the commencement, all Forsythe could think about was the time Scott had told him about his brother, and the way his parents had looked at the funeral. His dulled senses barely caught the sound of his own name when he was introduced. By the time he got to the podium he was in a daze. Staring at the audience, he noticed tears in the eyes of some of the mothers and the somber expressions on the faces of those fathers that weren’t half asleep — all of them watching this different kind of funeral. He just stood there looking out at them, unable to remember what or why — not embarrassed, just not caring; feeling sorry for all those parents. He tried to concentrate, knowing he better say something fast or get the hell out of there.

  “I’m supposed to give a speech. I had one memorized, but I can’t remember it now.” He paused, and there were a few chuckles; but the tone he proceeded with cut them short. “It was one of those about helping mankind and making this world a better place. You’ve heard it all before. I don’t believe a word of it. Since I’m up here already, I might as well give some sort of speech, and I might as well say something I do believe.”

  “This world was a fucked-up place on the day I was born, and if I live to be a hundred years old, it’ll be just as fucked up on the day I die.” Even the fathers — some just awakened — sat up and stared at him in disbelief. The room filled with murmurs; but as he began again, his words quickly silenced them. “I was going to tell you you now had an opportunity to change the world, and all that other bullshit. That’s the same thing they probably told your parents. The same thing they’ve been saying ever since the first idiot put on these ridiculous hats and ten pound nightgowns. They keep saying it and nothing changes. Sure you can change the kind of car you drive, the food you eat, the houses you live in; but how important is that shit? You can’t change life. Everybody gets a ticket, and all the trips are different, but every one of them ends up in the same place and all the important stops are the same.”

  “Two weeks ago my best friend blew his own brains out — the whole Richard Cory bit. All any of you could say was ‘Why?’ That’s a good question — the best question. Anytime anything happens you can always ask ‘Why?’ I’ll bet he asked the same question just before he pulled the trigger: ‘Why, why the hell doesn’t everybody else do the same fucking thing I’m doing?’ I doubt he had an answer, and I don’t either. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m gonna stick around for a while to try and find one.

  “The first thing I’m gonna do is forget about all those phony answers we’ve been getting ever since we were kids. Most of us are stuffed so full of bullshit we’re gagging on it. When we were little kids there was one phrase we used to hear all the fucking time, ‘They lived happily ever after.’ Every fucked-up story they ever told us ended with the words, ‘They lived happily ever after.’ I’m seventeen years old and I still haven’t met one fucking person who’s lived happily ever after. They give us all kinds of rules to live by. Take a look around you. Those rules didn’t work for them and they won’t work for you. I’ve got a rule for you. It may not be a good one, but it’s no worse than any of the others you’ve been given: ‘If you feel like doing something, do it.’ I’m not telling you to go around killing people. You can’t go around doing everything you want, but there’s a lot of things you can do. If your old man wants you to take over the insurance business, but you want to live in the woods like a bum, live in the woods. If you’re a fag and you gotta suck somebody’s cock, go ’head and suck it. I could really give a shit, as long as it’s not mine. If you’re a girl that likes some guy, go ahead and sleep with him. I’m not telling you to go out and be the high school punchboard, but that wouldn’t bother me either. In fact I’d probably be the first in line. If your old man catches you smoking grass and he tries to hit you over the head with his whiskey bottle, you don’t have to take that shit. Sure there’s a lot of people you don’t want to hurt — I’m not telling you to forget that — but don’t forget something else either — it’s your goddamn life.”

  Forsythe’s mind went blank. He sensed the immaturity, not in what he had said, but in how he had said it. He wanted to say something intelligent, to explain himself, what he was doing, to the shocked and hostile faces staring at him. Grasping for ideas, he found only memories. Fragmented, swirling through his thoughts, they further confused him. Wondering if he were crying, he perceived an idea without any means of expressing it, heard himself say, “I just . . . I just don’t want to spend my life thinking about things I never got to do, thinking about how I should have done it.”

  Kovacs walked around to the positions and told the men to get ready to move out. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from the leaves and a fresh, clean scent pervaded the air. The platoon moved out in two columns, trudging back in the direction of the camp. As soon as they reached it, the men took off their wet clothes and hung them on the tops of their hootches. Most of them were naked and either walking around the area or lying on their ponchos when word was passed that the lieutenant wanted a formation. Forsythe started to walk towards it in the nude, but Harmon told him to get some trousers on. As they straggled over, they found Kramer waiting for them.

  “This won’t take long. We’re going on a company-size operation up Charlie Ridge. We’ll pull out at three o’clock and get as high as we can by dawn, then sweep across and come down by tomorrow evening. You can leave your hootches up. We won’t be taking packs. Bring enough C-rats and water. That’s it.”

  6. Charlie Ridge

  No ambushes were sent out that night. The watches ran from nine o’clock until three and were cut to an hour and a half each. Tony 5 took the last watch in his fire team and woke everybody up at a quarter to three. As they moved out in the direction of Ladybird Park, the night air was damp and chilly; but after only a few minutes of marching their shivering bodies warmed and started to perspire. The men had carefully adjusted their equipment so as to keep it from rattling, and there was no talking along the columns. The only sounds were the soft, steady scrapings of boots along the dirt road.

  A third-quarter moon made it possible for Chalice to see the silhouettes of the first three men in front of him. When the ammo can strap started digging into his shoulder, he switched it to his other arm. He tried to do so quietly, but as he swung the can in front of him it struck his rifle with a sharp crack. Childs, who was in the column to Chalice’s left, turned his head sharply but didn’t say anything.

  They had marched for what seemed like a short time when both columns came to a halt. Tony 5 walked around to each of his men to tell them they were at the park, that two
of the other platoons had already started moving out, and that Second Platoon would go last. A few minutes later they peeled off the right side of the road and meshed into one column.

  The ville bordering the road extended back almost a hundred yards. More from curiosity than fear, Chalice scanned the hootches for signs of life. His head turned to one side, he was startled by the snort of a water buffalo penned a few feet away on his other side. He wasn’t the only one startled, and a low hum of muffled laughter came from the men around him.

  The pace quickened as they reached a path on the other side of the ville. It took them across a few hundred yards of rice paddies and ended at a small stream. They crossed it on a plank less than six inches wide and a few feet below the surface of the water. Chalice thought the stream was shallow and that the men in front of him were walking through it. When he placed his foot in the water he barely got it on the board and nearly lost his balance. He felt a little stupid until he reached the other side and heard the splash of someone behind him falling in.

  There was no path on the opposite bank, so the column moved along the top of a rice paddy dike. The crepe soles of their boots soon became clogged with mud, and the men were continuously falling off the dike. It finally led them to some high ground. They skirted its perimeter, then followed another dike on its opposite side. This one was somewhat wider than the first and much easier to walk on. It led them to another stream. There was no bridge this time so they had to wade through the cold, chest-high water.

  By the time Chalice had mastered walking along the slippery dikes, the column abandoned them and moved straight through the rice paddies. About every thirty yards they would have to climb over the dikes running across their path. Some of the paddies were practically dry, while others were two to three feet deep. The pace increased. Chalice’s leg muscles became taut from the continuous struggle to lift his feet from the mud, which seemed to be trying to suck him under. He’d had this same sensation in the daytime, and was glad he knew what to expect. When he finally reached the high ground at the base of the foothills, he estimated to himself that the company had moved about four kilometers, looking at this distance as something accomplished and gotten out of the way.

  The column moved along the base of the mountains until it came upon a crude path through the foothills. The pace quickened substantially. Chalice found himself running in spurts to keep up. He was constantly telling himself that every step was one more he’d gotten out of the way. Not realizing what lay ahead, he was surprised that the mountains weren’t as steep as he had expected. He soon found himself going downhill, and was relieved at first by the relative ease with which he moved. He then realized that any movement downhill would have to be made up for on the next slope. The grade leveled off for a short distance before starting up at a much steeper angle than before. As he climbed, sweat from his forehead poured down his face and began to sting his eyes. Instead of a path, they were now traveling on a stream bed that sometimes narrowed to a few inches. The loose rocks that lined the bed kept slipping out from beneath his feet, and his mind was completely occupied with keeping his balance. The path was often bordered by huge boulders that made it necessary for him to turn sideways in order to pass between them. He found himself running as fast as he could in long spurts, occasionally catching up with the man in front of him only to fall behind again almost immediately. Sometimes his rifle or ammo can would hit the rocks with a sharp crack, and a whisper would come out of the darkness saying, “Cool it.”

  The column kept passing through small valleys followed by progressively steeper slopes. Chalice stumbled constantly over the loose rocks, often falling to the ground. At first the pain of the sharper rocks cutting into his knees was almost unbearable; but as his falls became more frequent, a numbness enveloped him and he hardly thought of anything except getting to his feet and catching up. After one such fall he sprang up only to bump into the man in front of him — ‘Thank God, must be taking a break.’ To his chagrin, the column started moving again almost immediately. After traveling less than fifty yards, he found out what the holdup had been. The stream bed had led them to a huge boulder surrounded by brush thick enough to make passage through it impossible. Each successive man had to be lifted across the face of the rock by two other men on top of it. The noise of banging ammo cans and rifles was ignored in the struggle to get each soldier over the rock. By the time Chalice had scaled it and helped two others do the same, he was so far behind that he couldn’t even hear the men in front of him.

  For the first time that night a cloud moved in front of the moon cutting off all but a hint of its former light. He ran as fast as he could, judging direction only by the sharp, shifting rocks beneath his feet, which in a lost instant disappeared, leaving him running over an area of low brush. On the verge of panic, he stopped to listen for the sounds of the other men. He couldn’t even hear the sounds of those behind him, only his own forced, heavy breathing which seemed so loud that at first he couldn’t believe he was the source of it. Again he ran, not because of any rational thought, but from fear. His feet slipped out from under him, and his chest and legs crashed forcefully against some sharp rocks. Oblivious to the pain, a feeling of relief swept over him — ‘The stream bed!’ Before he could have made any conscious effort to get up, he was already on his feet running, the fall having only changed the position of his body and in no way having stopped him even for an instant. The bed followed what seemed to be level ground — ‘Maybe I’m going in the wrong direction. Maybe it’s the wrong stream bed!’ His own panic scared him. By a conscious act of will, he forced his mind clear of thoughts, at the same time deciding to run as fast as he could until he dropped. Not until his panic had waned to fear, did he realize how exhausted he was. The movement of his legs gradually slowed. His mind seemed to separate from his body, as if watching it slowly wind down from a distance. Panic again took hold. He burst forward, his own stamina surprising him. The thought, ‘I can’t keep this up,’ flashed through his mind, but he again realized how alone he was and with this realization came another thought, ‘Fuck if I can’t! I’ll catch them.’ An instant later, the mass of his body crashed into a similar mass, only larger. Both tumbled to the ground. He lay on his back, someone straddling his stomach and a rifle pressed hard against his neck.

  “Professor?”

  He muttered a choked “yes,” as the rifle was removed.

  “God! You scared the shit out of me. Are you crazy ? What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Got lost,” he coughed, as loose phlegm clogged his throat. “Bolton?”

  “Yeah, I’m the last man in the column. If I would of heard you sooner, I’d a shot.”

  Chalice leapt to his feet. “We better catch up.”

  Bolton grabbed his pants leg. “Hold on before you go crashing into someone else. The column’s stopped.”

  “For what?”

  “We’re there, I think.” Bolton pointed his rifle to a soft glow above the opposite chain of mountains. “Look, it’s dawn already.”

  The company hadn’t gone quite as high as planned. The point of the column had reached an area containing a few caves and the beginning of a path across the ridge. Trippitt ordered the first two platoons to follow the stream bed up to the next ridge and then travel laterally along it, Third Platoon to move slowly along the path, and Second Platoon to check out the caves and then catch up with Third Platoon.

  Kramer placed a machine gun above and below the caves for security before ordering his men to check them out. Only a few men were needed, so Chalice was able to sit down and rest. Exhausted and thirsty, he took a long drink from one of his canteens. The water loosened some phlegm in his throat. He spit it out and took a second drink. The warm water had a soothing effect, but he still hadn’t got used to the metallic taste it derived from the canteen.

  Forsythe, who had been poking around in one of the caves, walked over to Kramer and showed him some things he’d found — empty cans of fish, propaganda lea
flets, and a pouch full of AK-47 rounds. He took Kramer’s flashlight and headed back towards the cave, passing out a few of the rounds as souvenirs.

  “Over here,” Chalice called.

  Forsythe flipped him a round and said, “C’mon, let’s see what we can find.” Chalice put the AK round in his pocket and followed him.

  The entrance was small and they had to crawl in. Once inside, they could stand in a stooped position. Chalice had never liked cramped places, but the excitement of being somewhere the Viet Cong had recently been took his mind off this. He stood breathing in the damp, musty air while his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Forsythe started scratching around on the dirt floor with a stick.